


Ignore the Beating of My Heart

by popsicletheduck



Series: Fear of a Witcher [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia is Bad at Feelings, Guilt, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt/Comfort, I did really try for the comfort this time, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Hatred, Sickfic, and also outside hatred because you know. witchers, not sure I got there but it does get a bit soft at the end?, very briefly but it is there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22511914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popsicletheduck/pseuds/popsicletheduck
Summary: Geralt struggles to deal with the events of Lestovo. Jaskier might not be out of danger yet.Sequel to Did You Truly Know Fear, Before?
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Fear of a Witcher [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619665
Comments: 18
Kudos: 629





	Ignore the Beating of My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme, I wrote a sequel I wasn't planning on because the response to the first one blew me away~  
> I'm not sure this is quite what anyone expected or even wanted? But it's what I wrote so enjoy, I suppose.

“Jaskier.”

The voice had burrowed into his subconscious and yanked him from sleep before Jaskier could even comprehend what was going on, his heart thudding in his ears as his mind scrambled to catch up. It’d been dark, he’d fallen asleep, and it felt like no time had passed but now there was light and he hurt and his brain was screaming  _ danger, danger, danger. _

He gulped down a shaky breath, tried to pull the pieces together. He was still in his bedroll, still in the fields somewhere outside Lestovo. Overhead the sky was the faint blue of early dawn. No wonder it felt like he’d just fallen asleep, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours.

Geralt had spoken, and that had woken him up.

Rolling onto his side, Jaskier tried to push himself up enough to see where the witcher was, biting back a groan as bruises and cuts protested. 

“My bedroll is just behind your head, you can use that to sit up.”

The cushion of the rolled up blanket helped some, enough that Jaskier could get a proper view of the little camp.

Camp was possibly a generous term for it. There wasn’t a fire, and slowly Jaskier’s sleep addled brain was putting together that if he was currently using Geralt’s bedroll, it was more than likely Geralt hadn’t slept in it. But Roach was picketed nearby, saddled but dozing still. And Geralt…

They were in a little divot in the land, a couple of feet deep and maybe a dozen across. Geralt was currently on the opposite side of the divot, as far away from Jaskier as he could get. His expression was neutral, his legs folded under him as if he’d been meditating.

“There’s a waterskin and some biscuits on your other side.”

“I’m not hungry.” He wasn’t. Jaskier’s stomach had twisted itself into so tight a knot that just thinking about food left him feeling vaguely sick.

“You need to eat. You lost a lot of blood.”

“Geralt…”

“Eat. We need to get moving.”

Jaskier tried to eat, or at least tried to make it look like he was eating, nibbling on the edges of a biscuit without really chipping much off. His head was swimming and his mouth felt like it was full of cotton. The idea of trudging along after Roach was about as appealing as fighting a manticore barehanded, but if Geralt said they were moving then they were moving.

Shaking and panting, Jaskier managed to stagger to his feet ( _ the knife pushed into his leg slowly, slowly, while he screamed, voice cracking _ ). Only to stare down dumbfounded at his bare legs.

“Where are my pants?” The tunic he was wearing was Geralt’s spare, and big enough to hang off him like a dress, but not enough to cover him completely.

The pause lasted for two heartbeats too long.

“Ruined,” Geralt said. “You’ll have to get new ones at the next town. Wrap a blanket around yourself in the meantime.”

“I can’t walk like that.”

A grunt. “You’re riding Roach today.”

_ A low growl of “Ride”, reins slick with sweat in his hands, a dagger pressed against his side. _

The panic rose like a tide, sticky as drying blood and black as pitch. His breath hitched, his heart attempting to beat its way through his ribcage.

No, no. He wasn’t going to be weak like that. It took every ounce of strength he had left, but Jaskier balled his shaking hands into fists and managed to take the few steps over towards Roach. She nickered softly when he reached her, letting his weight sag against her. Roach was okay, Roach was good.

This, unfortunately, didn’t change the fact that Jaskier was expected to put himself into her saddle, which at the moment seemed a nigh insurmountable task.

“Do you need a hand?” There was no edge of teasing in Geralt’s flat voice, but Jaskier still felt his ears burn with shame.

“Yes.” 

He still flinched when Geralt lifted him, despite how hard he tried not to. Involuntary, the way the sweat gathered on his palms and his pulse hammered through his head. It would pass, he told himself. In time it would pass. 

All he had to do was hold on until then.

Geralt was used to the quiet.

Sure, since Jaskier had decided to tag along his life had gotten significantly louder, but Jaskier had been traveling with him for only a few months. Compared to the decades he’d spent on his own, that was nothing.

So why now was he straining to hear any possible sound? Why now did the silence put him on edge, like he was waiting for a blow to fall?

Traveling used to be something near meditative for him. Nothing but the sound of Roach's hooves and the slow beating of his heart and all the slight sounds of the world around for miles and hours. Then there had been Jaskier and his endless prattling which had somehow, somewhere, become just part of the background. And now the last place he wanted to be was his own head and Jaskier was silent, and Geralt didn't know what to do.

It felt like Blaviken, he realized with a start. Like after Blaviken, when he'd taken Roach and walked and walked and walked, no direction in mind, just distance. When he'd tell Roach any story that came to mind, training at Kaer Morhen or past hunts or anything, anything because otherwise he'd start thinking about the sound Renfri had made when he'd pulled the knife from her neck, her last whispered words and her blood in the street.

But he had more company than just Roach this time, and so the words he might've spoken remained unsaid.

He didn't want to think about those hazy memories, didn't want to remember any more than he already did. But he had to know, needed to know the exact extent. Somehow it felt dishonest to Jaskier to not remember. So endlessly he pulled at the empty places in his recollection, finding nothing but misty uncertainty and incomplete suppoition. 

The miles scrolled out under his feet, the sun curving across its path in the sky, the landscape subtly shifting and yet unchanging. Just the sound of Roach's hooves and the slow beating of his heart and-

Ragged breathing.

Geralt turned for the first time in hours to find Jaskier pale as death, sweat matting his hair and dripping down his face. His eyes were distant, his mouth hanging open in panting breaths.

"Damnit, Jaskier, why didn't you say something?" He'd forgotten, usually Jaskier made his need for a break so obviously and loudly clear with his complaining and he'd gotten far too caught up in his own head.

Jaskier flinched at the tone. He hadn’t meant it to come out so harsh. 

“I’m fine,” he rapsed, “we can keep going.”

“You look like a corpse.” 

Trying to draw himself up, Jaskier attempted to mimic his usual grandiose attitude. “Really, Geralt, that’s… that’s rude, I’m-”

“You’re going to fall out of the saddle.”

“That’s not even a little true.” As if trying to prove Geralt wrong, he tried to dismount. If Geralt hadn’t been standing there, he would’ve ended up face down in the dirt. As it was, he felt the full body shudder than ran through Jaskier as he caught him. Setting him down as quickly as he could while still making sure he didn’t fall over, Geralt grabbed a waterskin and shoved it into Jaskier’s hands. 

“Drink.”

For a moment Geralt felt like he’d taken one of his potions. Every sense seemed to be on high alert, catching every rustle in the grass around them, every flickering mote of dust kicked up by their passage, every bitter waft of fear from Jaskier. And underneath that-

No. 

Jaskier yelped when Geralt put a hand on his back, but Geralt barely heard it. They were deep in midsummer, traveling underneath the glare of the afternoon sun. Everything was warm. But this was different, something deeper and hotter, coming from beneath the swath of bandages covering Jaskier’s torn back. And he could smell it for certain now, sharp and distinct even underneath fear and sweat.

Infection.

Geralt cursed himself, cursed himself for being careless, for not being prepared with anything to treat a human, for being weak and falling prey to magic and dragging them into this situation to begin with.

“Geralt?” Jaskier asked, quiet and thin. He was tensed as a bowstring, pulled so tight Geralt almost feared he’d snap.

“We have to keep going.”

They had to keep going. They had to reach the next town. Geralt couldn’t do a single thing to stop the death now looming over Jaskier and the helplessness twisted inside him like a knife buried in his gut.

He would not let Jaskier die. Not like this.

Not because of him.

The days blurred into a grey haze of pain for Jaskier. Everything hurt all the time. The world was too hot or too cold by turns, leaving him shivering as he sweated. His head felt wrong, too heavy and far, far too light, his muscles too weak even as they tensed in pain.

Through it all Geralt was like a ghost in black leather, lingering just at the edge of his awareness, never closer than he had to be. Sometimes Jaskier shuddered at his touch or his voice and couldn't remember why, and sometimes he remembered with startlingly perfect clarity every crack of the whip and every snarled word.

And still they kept traveling. When Jaskier got too weak to ride Geralt tied him in place and they kept traveling. He thought at one point that the witcher might've climbed onto Roach as well, the air frigidly cold as it whipped past faster than before, but he wasn't sure. Time and distance and reality wobbled strangely, dusk following far too quickly on the heels of dawn only for the night to stretch indefinite.

Somewhere he lost track and somewhere he lost count. And somewhere Jaskier slipped farther into that grey haze and didn't come back out again.

The village was small, maybe a dozen buildings clustered around the road, rough wood and sod. Geralt didn’t care, because there were people, and there had to be a healer, and at this point he could practically feel the heat coming off Jaskier through his armor as he sat behind him on Roach. Distrust and suspicion lay heavy in the eyes of the villagers but he got pointed towards the healer and that was all that mattered.

She was young still, barely into her adulthood and for a moment Geralt was worried, but she didn’t panic as he pulled Jaskier’s limp form off Roach, just set her jaw, pushed a few stray strands of hair out of her face, and pointed him inside.

“How long has he been like this?” she asked, already pulling herbs from where they hung in the rafters as Geralt laid him down.

“Infection set in four days ago, he’s been unconscious since yesterday evening.”

He saw the way her shoulders tensed at that, but she didn’t say anything else. Not until she began pulling back bandages, and then for just a moment her hands stilled, and when she turned to Geralt her dark eyes were flinty.

“This man’s been brutalized.” Her voice was hard as steel and twice as unforgiving. “Did you do this to him, witcher?”

He could lie. The whole situation was far more complicated than it had any right to be.

He didn’t.

“Yes.”

Anger blazed through her, and for a moment Geralt thought she might try to hit him. Instead she pointed to the door and snarled, “Get out of my house. Get out of Vabryn. Because if I see you here again, mutant bastard, I’ll string you up myself.”

He could’ve argued. He could’ve explained. He could’ve pleaded to stay, just to know that Jaskier would survive.

He didn’t.

He walked out to Roach and carefully unstrapped Jaskier’s lute from where he had tucked if after the bard no longer had the strength or clarity of mind to carry it himself. Then the rest of his things, and finally a bag of coin. The healer glared at him as he stepped back inside, opening her mouth, but he held up a hand.

“His things,” Geralt said, placing the bundle down just inside the door. “And payment.” He tossed the bag onto a nearby table where it landed with a heavy clink. It was likely more than a town like this would see in half a year.

For a moment, just a moment, he hesitated in the doorway. And then very quietly he added, “Save him, please.”

And then he walked out the door, mounted Roach, and continued down the road.

Jaskier would be better off without him anyway.

Jaskier woke, and he was on fire. Flames flickered just underneath his skin, blackening muscle and bone, charring blood. Even his eyes felt hot. He pleaded with Geralt, swore he wasn’t a monster, begged for it to end. Cool hands on him and something nasty tipped down his throat that made him gag and the sound of distant words he couldn’t make out. He slept.

Jaskier woke, and everything was strange and wrong and nothing made sense. There was firelight and the smell of grass but he couldn’t find the stars overhead, couldn’t find the moon.

“Geralt?” he croaked, because he couldn’t find him either.

“Hush,” a voice said, a hand through his hair, soft and light, “he’s gone now, you’re safe.”

And that definitely didn’t make sense because he was safer with Geralt, because Geralt looked out for him even if he wouldn’t admit it and was grumpy about it the whole time, but the words in his head couldn’t seem to find their way out of his mouth. He slept.

Jaskier woke, and nothing was right and everything hurt. He didn’t know where he was and he didn’t know what was happening and he cried for things he’d lost so long ago he’d almost forgotten what it was to have them. He slept.

Jaskier woke to the warm golden light of late afternoon seeping in underneath a door that didn’t quite fit the frame it’d been placed in. He felt drained, exhausted even though he’d just been sleeping but unable to slip back under. Brain sluggish and thoughts mired in pitch, he tried to piece together fragmented memories to figure out where he was, but he couldn’t decide what had been real and what had been a dream. Geralt wouldn’t beat him, but he swore he could still feel the lingering shadows of bruises.

The door opened and a woman walked in, a basket against her hip and a pitcher in her hand and she was familiar in a hazy way. She was somewhere in her mid twenties, brown hair tied back and dirt streaked against a rough apron she pulled off as she came in.

“You’re awake,” she said, smiling as she came closer and laid a hand on his forehead. “Fever’s broken, thank the gods. Was a good thing you got here when you did, it was. A very near thing, far too close for my comfort and yours too.”

“Where am I?” Jaskier asked, his voice rasping with disuse. “Who are you?”

The cup of water put into his hands smelled faintly of something medicinal, but it did the job.

“Name’s Brenna. I’ve been looking after you for near three days now while you fought off the infection that took hold. You’re in Vabryn, few days out from Lestovo.”

Lestovo. Memories crystalized with all the clarity and pain of splintered glass.

“Geralt. Where’s Geralt?” He tried to push himself up, ignoring the weakness in shaking muscles.

Brenna held him back, easing him back onto the thin cot beneath him. “Easy, lad, the witcher’s gone. Threw him out myself, I’ll not be having his like in my home.”

“Gone? He left? You made him leave?”

“Aye. Should’ve hanged him anyway for what he did to you, but you’re safe now which is the important part.”

“What he- oh no, no, no, it’s not like that, it’s, ah, never mind. You wouldn’t happen to know where he went, do you?”

She shrugged, her hands already busy at a small wooden mortar again, but her eyes were sharp as they flicked to him. “Down the road, have no idea where he was headed. You know whatever he’s got on you, lad, there are ways of breaking curses.”

Jaskier laughed, small and short before his body protested the movement. “Curse? No, Geralt’s been a blessing since I caught him brooding in the shadows in Posada, though I will admit that must seem strange given my current circumstance. I’ll just have to catch up with him again.”

Brenna snorted. “You’re not getting out of that bed for a week yet.”

Jaskier let his head fall back against the pillow. He knew he’d been in better beds before, but at the moment this one was more than enough. The ache seemed to have taken root in his bones. 

“Alright. But I will find him again, mark my words.”

A witcher, Vesemir had taught him, must always be in complete control of himself, body and mind. His survival depended on it.

Which meant it was luck that had kept Geralt alive this time. That made him grit his teeth almost as much as the pain did. He didn’t like relying on luck. It had a bad habit of fucking off whenever he needed it most.

He managed to make it back to Roach with the griffin’s head. The armor had taken the brunt of the damned thing’s talons, but it hadn’t taken all of it. Geralt could feel blood soaking down the side of his tunic from the hole in his shoulder.

“Suppose this is what I get,” he muttered to Roach as his fingers slipped on bent and bloody buckles.

He’d had nightmares. For days, weeks now, ever since he’d left Jaskier behind. Everything his conscious mind had forgotten about Lestovo, perfectly clear and crisp, every night. Every blow, every scream, every time Jaskier had begged him to stop and he hadn’t. And then he’d wake and remember how still Jaskier had been when he’d seen him last, the look in the healer’s eyes and the tension in her shoulders. For all he knew, Jaskier was dead. 

He’d stopped sleeping in an attempt to avoid having to live through it yet again. Apparently it’d started to slow his reactions.

Geralt had managed to get one mangled pauldron off when some sound from a bit further down the hills had him stilling, his hand reaching for his sword. There hadn’t been any sign the griffin had a mate, but it wasn’t impossible and he’d already almost been gutted for carelessness once today. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. Whatever it was was getting closer, and it wasn’t being quiet about it.

And then Geralt sighed, long and loud. Because he could make out words. No, not words. Lyrics.

_ Oom-pah-pah! Oom-pah-pah! That’s how it goes. _

_ Oom-pah-pah! Oom-pah-pah! Everyone knows, _

_ She is no longer the same blushing rose, _

_ Ever since oom-pah-pah! _

_ There’s a little ditty they’re singing in the city, _

_ Espec’lly when -  _ Geralt!

Strolling up the path lute in hand as if he were taking a pleasure excursion instead of several miles deep in a wilderness that had until very recently been the home of a griffin was Jaskier. The last notes of the song he’d been playing rang discordantly as he rushed the last few steps.

“You know the idea of killing monsters is that their blood comes out and yours stays inside you, right? Because you seem to have missed that very small point once again.” In moments he’d found the ties that Geralt had been stuck on, cursing under his breath as he pulled them loose.

Geralt grunted as he pulled the last piece off. The wound was deep but small; the griffin had been trying to pin him down. He’d heal fine.

“I’m assuming all your supplies are still in the same place as last time,” Jaskier continued, rifling around in Roach’s packs. “Honestly, Geralt, you’d think after several decades of this you’d be better at it.”

“I don’t see anyone else complaining about the job I do.”

“Well no, but that’s because they don’t usually care about what state you’re in afterwards, as long as you’ve killed their beastie. I, on the other hand, have a vested interest in keeping you in one piece and therefore take offense with your awful habit of getting stabbed.”

Jaskier continued to prattle as Geralt dealt with the injury, small pieces of nonsense from his travels as they’d been apart. It was… familiar in a way Geralt hadn’t expected it to be. Just background noise truly, but something outside of his own head. A reminder that he wasn’t alone.

“Why are you here?” he asked, interrupting whatever it had been the bard was saying.

“I’m here because I’ve been looking for you for weeks now, ever since you left me in the middle of nowhere and rode off without even a goodbye! And then I finally get word that you’re off hunting a griffin and have to trek all the way out here just to make sure that this time I don’t lose you again.”

“You’re better off without me.”

Jaskier stopped in his pacing and posturing to sit down in front of him. “That,” he said, “is patently untrue. I’m better off with you, Geralt of Rivia, and with you is where I’m going to stay, for as long as I can.”

Maybe it was the exhaustion, maybe it was the blood loss, maybe it was something else. But he said, “I could’ve killed you.”

A smile, not Jaskier’s usual performance one. This one was smaller and a little lopsided. “Lots of people could’ve killed me. You weren’t even the first one to try. And you didn’t, by the way, which I feel is the important part.”

“I hurt you.”

“That wasn’t you. That was some extremely fucked up spell.” The sincerity in his eyes was almost painful. “I don’t blame you, Geralt, not for any of it.”

“You were afraid of me.”

“Human instinct, unfortunately. There wasn’t a thing I could’ve done to stop it, and trust me, I would’ve if I could.”

Geralt wasn’t sure when and where and why he’d gotten Jaskier’s trust. Wasn’t sure he wanted it, not when he was so likely to bring about his death. But to have someone who didn’t look at his with automatic suspicion, who cared about what happened to him, who wasn’t afraid of him even after everything he’d done…

Besides, it didn’t look like he could get rid of Jaskier even if he wanted to.

He grunted and pushed himself to his feet. “It’s a long way back to town, unless you want to sleep on the ground.”

“Not if I can at all help it.” Jaskier leapt to his feet started off down the winding path, already picking up the song he’d left off before.

_ There’s a little ditty they’re singing in the city, _

_ Espec’lly when they’ve been on the gin or the beer. _

_ If you’ve got the patience your own imaginations, _

_ Will tell you exactly what you want to hear. _

Geralt followed behind leading Roach and allowed himself the slightest of smiles as the bard launched enthusiastically into the chorus.

_ Oom-pah-pah! Oom-pah-pah! That’s how it goes. _

_ Oom-pah-pah! Oom-pah-pah! Everyone knows, _

_ They all suppose what they want to suppose, _

_ When they hear oom-pah-pah! _

Destiny was bullshit. Whatever odd combination of luck and coincidence had brought them together, kept them together, it didn’t mean anything. But it mattered, all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> "Hey popsicle did you just riff off the beginning of 'Bottled Appetites'?"  
> Listen, listen, somewhere along the line my brain decided it was funnier if it'd happened more than once but also this is set before "Bottled Appetites" so I couldn't reference it. But yes.  
> The song Jaskier sings is "Oom-pah-pah" from the musical _Oliver!_ because in my head it fits the same 'mostly nonsense but also sex' category as "Fishmonger's Daughter".


End file.
